I was very touched to see this photo! The reason is that the two famous professional players from the photo, Kobayashi Koichi and Cho Chikun, have been rivals for many years, as both have dominated the Japanese Go in the 1980s and 1990s.

Both studied Go as kids in the famous Kitani Minoru school, and according to this source their score against each other is very-very close.

It is so nice to see Cho’s hand around Kobayashi’s shoulder, as they look over – what else? – a game of Go, online…

The 32nd World Amateur Go Championship started yesterday in Matsue, Japan. Nothing unexpected in the first two rounds, but the third round came with a big surprise: Japan lost to Norway!! The Japanese representative this year is Mr. Hironori Hirata who will be 85 next month. He participated several times at this championship in the past, and even won it once. Too bad he made a blunder in this game: he failed to protect against a simple threat and a big group of his died. If he defended, he would have won by a few points (maybe less than komi).

After losing the first game to challenger Iyama Yuta, Kisei title holder Cho U won the second game.

I found Iyama’s move 40 quite amazing, it is played in a place that would never occur to me, see the next diagram.

In the game black replied by connecting with the triangle marked stone. This makes move 40 a very efficient forcing move, since now white has even more forcing moves from the outside. This diagram shows the strongest continuation for white – in fact white did play this, but much later in the game.

Iyama Yuta who challenges Cho U for the Japanese Kisei title won game one by resignation.

Here is the exchange that took place at the end of the game:

The continuation is puzzling though – did Cho U make a mistake, or just set the scene for resignation? Here are the final moves. After black cuts with 6, a and b are miai for black, and he wins the semeai on the upper side.

White should have played as in the following diagram. The game looks close to me after this – in fact white looks a little ahead, but maybe I am missing something.

The 12th Nongshim Cup started a few days ago. Lee Sedol is the first Korean player and he eliminated Wang Xi of China and Iyama Yuta of Japan in the first two rounds.

Why is Lee Sedol the first Korean player? As a reminder, Nongshim Cup follows a “winner stays at the table” system, so usually each team would put their best players last.

According to wbaduk.com, Lee Sedol specifically requested to be put in the first place, presumably because he was planning to win all his games. In the light of this news, I was very satisfied to learn that he was eliminated by Xie He in the third game. I like Lee Sedol a lot, but not when he is so over-confident. This reminded me of Yoda Norimoto of Japan, who is usually bragging a lot before the tournaments he is going to play in, but his results don’t usually match his bragging.

Here is the record of the game between Xie He (black) and Lee Sedol (white). Xie He won by resignation.

The hosting country, Japan, started very strongly with four Japanese players winning in the first round: Anzai Nobuaki defeated Chen Shiyuan of Taiwan, Takao Shinji defeated amateur Fernando Aguilar representing South America, Hane Naoki defeated Choi Cheolhan of Korea and a very big surprise: veteran Ishida Yoshio defeated Mok Jinseok of Korea!

Just like last year, though, after a strong start Japan was completely eliminated in the second round, unfortunately: Yamashita Keigo lost to Piao Wenyao of China, Cho U lost to Kim Jiseok of Korea, Anzai Nobuaki lost to Lee Sedol of Korea, Takao Shinji lost to Park Yeonghun of Korea, Hane Naoki lost to Kang Dongyun of Korea and Ishida Yoshio lost to Kong Jie of China.

Here is the record of the game in which Ishida Yoshio defeated Mok Jinseok (by resignation).

Next round will be played in two days, and it will match four Chinese players (Gu Li, Piao Wenyao, Kong Jie and Qiu Jun) against four Korean players (Lee Sedol, Park Yeonghun, Kim Jiseok and Kang Dongyun).

Just how strong are top professional go players compared to amateur players?

This question comes up again and again. The replies vary a lot, from saying that current amateurs are so strong that there is little difference between them and top professionals, to saying that there is such a huge gap that amateurs can never get any close to top professionals levels.

It is being said that top Asian amateurs are quite close in strength to mid-level (5 dan) professionals. It is not easy to get a very accurate comparison though due to the fact that there are few chances for amateurs and top professionals to play together. One interesting data point is the series of results of the annual games between the professional Honinbo and amateur Honinbo in Japan. The handicap is adjusted each year according to the previous year’s result, and the handicap seems to vary between 2 and 3 stones.

These kinds of exceptional results are keeping the amateurs hopes high. But exceptional results are statistical improbable. We have to look at several games to draw a meaningful conclusion.

At the recently finished Shusaku Cup organized in Romania there were two Chinese professional players invited (Luo Xihe 9p and Huang Yizhong 7p), and they played teaching games with several top players. Last year the guests were Mok Jinseok 9p and Kim Seung-Jun 9p of South Korea. The professional guests gave between 2 and 4 stones handicap to several European players rated 5-7 dan and won almost all games both in 2009 and 2010 editions. This shows that professional players are very very strong.

Pal Balogh 6d received 3 stones from Luo Xihe 9p and won by 3.5 points. This is the only instance when the amateur player won in the series of the Shusaku Cup demo/teaching games that I saw.